On one level, I just don't know. Transportation infrastructure projects of all kinds in the United States suffer from oddly higher construction costs than projects in Europe. But from the look of Amtrak's proposal in addition to the high unit costs problem, there seems to be an awful lot of emphasis on doing stuff that has no really clear operational benefits. For example, they don't like the fact that right now Union Station's existing platforms have unsightly and inconvenient columns in the middle of them. To get rid of the columns, they need to scrap the 2,000-space parking deck that they're supporting. Then they want to replace the parking deck with a 5,000-space four-level underground garage. That's an awful lot of money to spend on something that has minimal operational value from the standpoint of actually operating a railroad.

The subtext to this particular garage element, I think, is that separate from the station renovation project, Akridge has purchased the rights to deck over some of the track north of the station for real estate development purporses. The existing parking deck, meanwhile, is extremely ugly. So there'd be a lot of value to Akridge removing the deck, replacing it with a very expensive underground parking solution, and then building a snazzy looking glass-and-steel concourse where the existing parking deck is. Meanwhile the city would get thousands of construction jobs, local politicians would get an iconic new structure, the VRE and MARC commuter rail lines would be excused from needing to better coordinate their operations, and the expanded station could incorporate even more shopping mall features than the existing ones.

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Much less exciting than this would be to spend about half as much money replacing the B&P Tunnel outside Baltimore and bringing constant tension catenary technology to the entirety of the D.C.-New York line. But if we did that, trains could actually go much faster!